“What’d he say?”
“There’s been a change of plans. He wants us to meet him in a different place, now.”
“Where?”
“Indianapolis.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
Something flickers in the rearview mirror.
For the first time in a long time, there is another vehicle on the highway. I feel relieved. Another person is out here. The rest of the world is still fine. Still sane. It’s a truck. People have trucks out here in the country.
But as the truck accelerates and grows closer, I begin to feel scared. Mathilda sees my pale cheeks, my worried frown. She can feel my fright. “Where are we?” she asks.
“Not far now,” I say, watching the rearview.
“Who’s behind us?”
Mathilda sits up and cranes to look back.
“Sit still, Mathilda. Tighten your seat belt.”
The newish brown pickup truck grows rapidly in the mirror. It moves smoothly but too fast.
“Why’s it coming so fast?” asks Mathilda.
“Mommy?” asks Nolan, rubbing his eyes.
“Quiet, you two. I need to concentrate.”
Dread rises in my throat as I watch the rearview. I ease the accelerator down to the floor, but the brown truck is flying now. Sucking up the pavement. I can’t take my eyes off the mirror.
“Mommy,” exclaims Mathilda.
My eyes dart back to where the road is supposed to be and I swerve to negotiate a bend. Nolan and Mathilda hold each other tight. I get the car under control, veer back to my lane. Then, just as we come around the bend to a long straightaway, I see another car in the oncoming lane. It is black and new and now there is no place for us to go.
“Get in the backseat, Nolan,” I say. “Get buckled in. Mathilda, help him.”
Mathilda scrambles to push her brother off her lap and into the backseat. Nolan looks at me, stricken. Big tears are welling in his eyes. He sniffles and reaches for me.
“It’s okay, baby. Just let your sister help you. Everything’s going to be fine.”
I make a steady stream of baby talk while I focus on the road. My eyes alternate between the black car in front and the brown truck behind. Both are closing fast.
“Okay, we’re buckled in, Mommy,” reports Mathilda from the backseat. My little soldier. Before my mother passed away, she used to say that Mathilda was an old soul. It was in her eyes, she said. You could see the wisdom in her beautiful green eyes.
I hold my breath and squeeze the wheel. The hood of the brown truck fills the entire rearview mirror, then disappears. I look to my left in wide-eyed wonder as the rattling brown truck swerves into the oncoming lane. A woman is looking back at me through the passenger window. Her face is warped by terror. Tears stream down her cheeks and her mouth is open and I realize that she’s screaming and pounding her fists—
And then she’s gone, obliterated in a head-on collision with the black car. Like matter and antimatter. It’s as if they’ve erased each other from existence.
Only the awful mechanical grinding crunch of metal collapsing into metal echoes in my ears. In the rearview, a dark lump of metal rolls off the road, throwing smoke and chunks of debris.
It’s gone. Maybe it never happened. Maybe I imagined it.
Slowing the car, I pull off the road. I put my forehead on the cool plastic of the steering wheel. I close my eyes and try to breathe, but my ears are ringing and that woman’s face is on the backs of my eyelids. My hands are shaking. I reach under my thighs and pull tight to steady myself. The questions start from the backseat but I can’t answer them.
“Is that lady okay, Mommy?”
“Why did those cars do that?”
“What if more cars come?”
A few minutes pass. My breath squeezes painfully in and out of my clenched diaphragm. I strain out the sobs, choke down on my emotions to keep the kids calm.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say. “We’re going to be okay, you guys.”
But my voice rings hollow even in my own ears.
Ten minutes down the road, I come across the first accident.
Smoke pours from twisted wreckage, like a black snake writhing through shattered windows, escaping into the air. The car is half on its side next to the road. A guardrail zigzags out into the road from where it was bashed into during the accident. There are flames coming from the rear of the car.
Then, I see movement—people motions.
In a flash, I imagine myself stepping on the accelerator and speeding past. But I’m not that person. Not yet, anyway. I guess people don’t change that fast, even in the apocalypse.
I pull over a few yards down the road from the wrecked car. It’s a white four door with Ohio plates.
“Stay in the car, kids.”
The hood of the wrecked car is crumpled up like a tissue. The bumper lies on the ground, cracked in half and covered in mud. A mess of engine parts are visible, and the tires point in different directions. I gasp when I notice that one end of the guardrail is going into the passenger-side door.
“Hello?” I call, peering into the driver’s side window. “Anybody need help?”
The door creaks open and a young, overweight guy spills out onto the road shoulder. He rolls over onto all fours, blood running down his face. He coughs uncontrollably. I kneel and help him away from the car, feeling the gravel shoulder gouging my knees through my panty hose.
I force myself to check inside the car.
There is blood on the steering wheel, and the guardrail juts incongruously through the passenger window, but there is no one else inside. Nobody skewered by that errant rail, thank god.
My hair hangs in my face as I pull the young fat guy away from the wreck. It flutters back and forth with each breath I take. At first, the young man helps. But after a few feet, he collapses onto his stomach. He stops coughing. Looking back toward the car, I see there’s a trail of glistening droplets on the pavement. In the front seat, there is a pool of black liquid.
I shove the man over onto his back. His neck rolls loosely. His blue eyes are open. I see some black soot around his mouth, but he is not breathing. I look down and then glance away. A large chunk of flesh from his side has been torn out by the guardrail. The ragged hole gapes there like an anatomy lesson.
For a moment, I hear only the rush of the flames licking the breeze. What can I do? Only one thing comes to mind: I move my body to block my kids’ sight of the dead man.
Then, a cell phone rings. It comes from the man’s shirt pocket. With bloodstained fingers, I reach for his phone. When I slide it out of his pocket and hold it to my ear, I hear something that crushes the small flicker of hope that was still somewhere deep inside me.
“Kevin,” says the phone. “This is your father. Bad things are happening. I can’t talk. Meet me at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Gotta go.”
Aside from the name, it’s the exact same message. Another incident. Piling up.
I drop the phone onto the man’s chest and stand up. I get back inside my ancient car and hold the steering wheel until my hands stop shaking. I don’t remember seeing or hearing anything for the next few minutes.
Then, I put the car in gear.
“We’re going to Grampa’s house, kids.”
“What about Indianapolis?” asks Mathilda.
“Don’t worry about that.”
“But Grampa said—”
“That wasn’t your grandfather. I don’t know who that was. We’re going to Grampa’s.”
“Is that man okay?” asks Nolan.
Mathilda answers for me.
“No,” she says. “That man is dead, Nolan.”
I don’t chastise her. I don’t have the luxury.